I've found that something somewhat consistently makes Crimson Clarity behave oddly--I believe it may be related to Cassandra providing threshold, but more likely it seems to be if you use Thonia's resource discard to gain resources. Even if you have a ruby threshold and sufficient resources, Crimson Clarity in-hand don't show as playable when you're in a phase that should otherwise be able to play basic actions.

If you are using the Crimson Clarity equipment, it requires a target in your hand. This is a primary reason to switch from that equipment to the gobbler goggles instead.

If you are playing a Thonia that has access to Sapphire, Schrewd Manipulation is the single most powerful enabler you can play. If you manage to play one on turn 1, and have any target to make use of it, you likely just win the game on the spot. You can watch the last hour or so from last night's stream on my YouTube channel for some good examples on just how powerful it is with Thonia. Every single starting hands that had a Schrewd Manipulation and the required threshold to play it directly translated into turn 1 wins.

The Tomb Swap and Cosmic Totems slots are fairly open to whatever you prefer as ways to tackle the "less favorable" content. But to be honest, as soon as you start winning games on turn 1 2/3 of the time, there are very little challenges in the game right now that can hope to go further than turn 2 against it.

I'm still very curious to see if you'll find a good use of Calamity with Thonia. The power of the card and the fact that it goes back to deck certainly makes it for a very good candidate of a possible infinite damage combo. Keep us posted!

Not for the Kraken, but yeah you're right about Brutecrown. If you're using Katsuhiro for the charge, it should be pretty easy to build a deck that blitzes down the boss.

There isn't one in the list, so maybe I'll try to throw one together for him. It could be really useful since he's such a good party member.

Interestingly enough, last iteration of the list was surprisingly strong in Brutecrown. On last night's stream, even against last boss, I had no problems going through all stages and kill Kazraga on the last "stage". Even then, I "only" was able to start going off on the second turn! Smart use of Schrewd Manipulation should be able to generate well into the hundreds of damage total in a fight, even without a Cosmic Totem to reset your deck. Funny enough, I was very unlucky on my try last night as the last Crucible was in the last 6 cards of my deck!

The Wardens of Entrath is a large, open to public community of Hex enthusiasts with a mission to help and support Hex players and content creators alike!

Not for the Kraken, but yeah you're right about Brutecrown. If you're using Katsuhiro for the charge, it should be pretty easy to build a deck that blitzes down the boss.

There isn't one in the list, so maybe I'll try to throw one together for him. It could be really useful since he's such a good party member.

Interestingly enough, last iteration of the list was surprisingly strong in Brutecrown. On last night's stream, even against last boss, I had no problems going through all stages and kill Kazraga on the last "stage". Even then, I "only" was able to start going off on the second turn! Smart use of Schrewd Manipulation should be able to generate well into the hundreds of damage total in a fight, even without a Cosmic Totem to reset your deck. Funny enough, I was very unlucky on my try last night as the last Crucible was in the last 6 cards of my deck!

With the move towards more cards you have no intention of ever playing, it makes sense that we're getting more efficient with Hand of the Black Crucible. Kazraga isn't a particularly nasty boss in the fist place. Kraken might be a little tougher if he manages to hit you with a tentacle, but with the damage totals we're seeing he probably isn't a bid deal anyway.

That said, I think I'll still try to build that Katsuhiro deck. Even my non-optimized build is fairly fast, without requiring an excessive number of clicks.

At worst, he's by far the fastest way to beat the Siren in the Portsmeare dungeon. Even your insanely good Vennen Ranger deck can have trouble against her, but those three starting Townsfolk puts her on a very short clock even before you play a card.

I'm not sure why you guys are debating Shrewd Manipulation vs Entrath Settlers... you should be playing both. Either card in you starting hand is an assured turn 1 win.

I've done four clears of Ruins of Kukatan so far with this list most taken from Coach. imgur.com/a/Aaw4y
Its currently at 22 turn 1 wins, and 2 turn 2 wins (one of those was probably my fault for not mulliganing a questionable hand). 91.7% turn 1 wins should easily qualify as the most broken thing in the game's history. The dream deck wasn't even close to that.

Edit: I've been using my human to get Tafford as another Merc. The 2 blessings are a nice free cycle before a discard outlet, and a better draw 2 after. Only card I'm debating in this list is -1 Tomb Swap, +1 Woken Drokkatar to give more potential damage (but it doesn't appear to be an issue in AZ2).

Alright, I think our work is done with Thonia, proven without the shadow of a doubt that it is broken. We already had plenty of proof that it was broken but I wanted to try and see if we could optimize even further.

My "non-budget" list ended up like this. I went to add every enabler we found, including the monster that is Settlers, then removed all the non-essential cards. I ended up with 17 open slots!!! It just shows you how strong this combo is. If you account for the 27 shards I'm playing, it means HALF of the deck doesn't really matter! Here, I'm using Transcend and Absolute power a Roar target to speed up the process of searching through the deck. Ascension is just the best damage we can get in terms of actions.

After realizing that half the deck didn't really matter, I went on creating this budget list and tested it... Got exact same results, just was requiring a few more clicks to get the wins, some amount of the time.

That budget list can easily be achieved by any new player with very low resources provided they managed to roll or get their hand on a Thonia. At which point, they can mow through the Campaign and farm gold as much as they want!

Will be documenting these two in the next guide update as "Community" created

At this point, I'm considering this matter closed. Was a blast working with you all on pushing this archetype to the limit. Looking forward to bounce more ideas here in the future!

The Wardens of Entrath is a large, open to public community of Hex enthusiasts with a mission to help and support Hex players and content creators alike!

If you are playing a Thonia that has access to Sapphire, Schrewd Manipulation is the single most powerful enabler you can play. If you manage to play one on turn 1, and have any target to make use of it, you likely just win the game on the spot. You can watch the last hour or so from last night's stream on my YouTube channel for some good examples on just how powerful it is with Thonia. Every single starting hands that had a Schrewd Manipulation and the required threshold to play it directly translated into turn 1 wins.

The Tomb Swap and Cosmic Totems slots are fairly open to whatever you prefer as ways to tackle the "less favorable" content. But to be honest, as soon as you start winning games on turn 1 2/3 of the time, there are very little challenges in the game right now that can hope to go further than turn 2 against it.

I'm still very curious to see if you'll find a good use of Calamity with Thonia. The power of the card and the fact that it goes back to deck certainly makes it for a very good candidate of a possible infinite damage combo. Keep us posted!

I like to think that they were able to move that fast because we thouroughly explored the issue and proved without a doupt that this was to the detriment of the game in general. Also love the change, one of my first suggestions was actually to make it trigger once a turn. Glad to see they went in that direction. The augmentation to her active ability does make sense. Even then, we can still hit T1 and T2 resources to get the 3 - 4 sequence that were already very powerful.

Looking at the change, I think I'll be revisiting the mono blood Brides list I submitted earlier. It was decently fast and extremely powerful. I'm fairly certain it will get beyond the nerf fairly unscaved.

Also, now that things are a lot more under control, RW Majesty/Roar ramp deck could be the next best thing with her.

In short, her powers are still of the, if not the most, powerful in the game

The Wardens of Entrath is a large, open to public community of Hex enthusiasts with a mission to help and support Hex players and content creators alike!

I feel like the Thonia changes are on the whole fair and still plenty powerful and fun; I was worried that they'd go overboard with the adjustments, but she has presently been left with ample enough overhead to make interesting deck building and remain a competitive mercenary pick. Nice!

I feel like the Thonia changes are on the whole fair and still plenty powerful and fun; I was worried that they'd go overboard with the adjustments, but she has presently been left with ample enough overhead to make interesting deck building and remain a competitive mercenary pick. Nice!

Yeah, I predicted elsewhere they'd be limited to twice a turn and this is pretty close. Once a turn, but the two important ones are running at +50% power.

I didn't expect the charge power cost increase though. Playing a Ranger for the extra charge is that much more important now.

I feel like the Thonia changes are on the whole fair and still plenty powerful and fun; I was worried that they'd go overboard with the adjustments, but she has presently been left with ample enough overhead to make interesting deck building and remain a competitive mercenary pick. Nice!

Yeah, I predicted elsewhere they'd be limited to twice a turn and this is pretty close. Once a turn, but the two important ones are running at +50% power.
I didn't expect the charge power cost increase though. Playing a Ranger for the extra charge is that much more important now.

Playing any human is also an option to get 2 charges from party Mercs.